by TChris

This is the system American soldiers are fighting (and dying) to protect?

As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

by TChris

Having trouble keeping track of all the governors and members of Congress who are dogged by accusations of wrongdoing? Chris Cillizza assembled this handy scandal scorecard as a quick reference.

by TChris

Former Representative Randall "Duke" Cunningham, whose bribery conviction and resignation are discussed here, is rolling over on his coconspirators. Who will he bring down?

Cunningham's 33-page guilty plea Monday says the congressman worked with four coconspirators to take $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and others over the past five years. The money went to pay for a San Diego estate, a Virginia condominium, a Rolls-Royce and a litany of other luxury items.

The plea agreement did not name the alleged conspirators, but details such as business addresses and occupations made some of their identities apparent. One was Mitchell Wade, former president of MZM Inc., a Washington, D.C., firm that does classified intelligence work for the military. The documents also suggest that another conspirator was Brent Wilkes, an associate of Wade's who headed a defense contracting company called ADCS Inc., which also provided campaign cash and favors to Cunningham while reaping valuable contracts.

I wish I could spend the day here blogging, but I can't. Here's an open thread so you can have your say.

Update: Tuesday's over, thread closed.

The Justice Department released 470 pages of documents about Judge Sam Alito to reporters Monday on highly techical legal issues -- and gave them three hours to read them

Despite the lack of time to fully digest them, as the New York Times reports, at least one thing was abundantly clear:

In several of the memorandums, however, Mr. Alito makes a series of arguments espousing a broad view of law enforcement authority and a skeptical view of proposals to protect individuals from legal investigations.

The Washington Post reports the memos show Alito was hostile to foreigner's rights:

As a senior lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued that immigrants who enter the United States illegally and foreigners living outside their countries are not entitled to the constitutional rights afforded to Americans.

Abortion is not the critical issue in Alito's nomination. Freedom and the right to life for the already born is more important.

There's no good news to report about the impending hanging of 25 year old Nguyen Van Tuong for a drug offense in Singaore scheduled for December 2. The Australian Government has given up, and right now the only thing it is requesting is that Nguyen's mother be allowed to hug her son on the way to the gallows.

Singapore's recently fired Chief Hangman Darshan Singh may perform the barbaric act after all. He says Nguyen will suffer less if he does it. Here's how it will go:

Susie at Suburban Guerilla:

Growing student debt, fast-shrinking student aid and few well-paying jobs upon graduation – why are we urging kids to go to college?

Say hello to the new debtor class:

The average student now graduates with three and a half times more debt than ten years ago, but still Washington wants to cut even more student aid.

I wonder if Congress has a stereo system in its chambers. I'd love for someone to put on Grace Slick singing "Feed Your Head."

Miami is taking new steps to keep terrorists off guard...asking Americans to supply ID papers when conducting ordinary activities like entering a bank or hotel or riding a bus or train.

Both uniformed and plainclothes police will ride buses and trains, while others will conduct longer-term surveillance operations. "People are definitely going to notice it," Fernandez said. "We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don't want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears."

Is this what we've become? Who said the terrorists didn't win the terror war?

[Via Atrios.]

Update: At least in Denver, the authorities are moving slowly in deciding whether to prosecute a woman who refused to show identification while riding a bus to work:

"Passengers aren't required to carry passports or any other identification documents in order to ride to work on a public bus," [ACLU Director Mark Silverstein] said.

There's a lot of Woodward bashing going on in the blogosphere today. I can't really chime in because until his re-emergence as a player in PlameGate, I can't recall reading anything he's written since Watergate. I've never read a book he authored solo. He's largely been a historical figure to me, the reporter who co-broke Watergate through Deep Throat.

Others are more familiar with his work. Arianna rakes him over the coals today for failing to see the story under his nose when writing his book Plan of Attack. Nora Ephron, who was married to his Watergate writing partner Carl Bernstein, provides her view, as does David Fiderer.

John Amato of Crooks and Liars saves his artillery for Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. Jane at Firedoglake takes on Andrea Mitchell. So does Tom Maguire.

I'm just going to read them all and hope to learn something.

I started a post earlier that I didn't get to finish because of an intervening radio interview on Tookie William's clemency petition, that began,

Since Viveca Novak is cooperating with Fitzgerald's probe regarding her conversations with Luskin, for all we know, she is corroborating something Luskin told her or she told Luskin -- or something Rove told Fitz or the grand jury -- rather than attacking it. Unlikely, I know, but still it's one possible explanation.

When I came back to it a few minutes ago, I had all but decided to delete it as being too far-fetched when I got an e-mail from Raw Story asking me if I had seen tomorrow's Washington Post article by Jim VanderHei. I hadn't seen it and now that I've read it, my abandoned post may not be far fetched after all. Vanderhei reports Luskin and Viveca Novak are friends and Luskin asked Fitz to talk to her about something he told her:

Think Progress exposes Bush's U-Turn on Immigration. Undocumented residents are no longer "hard working citizens" in his eyes. They have morphed into "terrorists, drug dealers, and criminals."

CNN has more on Bush's new immigration plan.

Update: Digby, as usual, makes tremendous sense on the issue.

by TChris

The Supreme Court views public high school administrators as the publishers of school newspapers. Freedom of the press, it is said, belongs to those who own the press, and the school administration has a publisher’s right to withhold content it deems contrary to "legitimate pedagogical concerns." The analysis follows a certain logic, but a public school newspaper belongs to the public, not just the school, and we should be concerned when we allow public officials to censor public discourse.

Administrators at the Oak Ridge (Tennessee) High School rounded up all 1,800 copies of the Oak Leaf because -- horrors! -- the student journalists wrote about topics relevant to their lives: birth control and tattoos.

The birth control article listed success rates for varying methods and gave locations where students could obtain contraceptives. The paper also contained a photo of an unidentified student’s tattoo, and [Superintendent] Bailey said the student had not told her parents about getting the tattoo.

“I have a problem with the idea of putting something in the paper that makes us a part of hiding something from the parents,” he said.

It’s a safe bet that the tattoo picture alone wouldn’t have instigated the paper’s recall. (More here and here.)